Energy harvesting communication systems: A practical full duplex approach

Energy efficiency has been a growing requirement in the latest development of wireless communication systems, and it has led to research on off-grid relay nodes with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) capabilities. Two SWIPT protocols have been developed in the past, named power splitting and time switching. Both protocols have been theoretically proven to improve energy-constrained relay nodes' performance. In this paper we compare both protocols' energy efficiencies, for a communication system equipped with Full Duplex capable relay nodes and taking into account power consumption from the relay's circuitry.